The Last Act of a Desperate Potato - Crockpot Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Crockpot Caramelized Onions

He rode a blazing saddle
He wore a shining star ...

 "Well, can't you see that's the last act of a desperate man?"

"We don't care if it's the first act of "Henry V," we're leaving!"

Oh, how I adore Mel Brooks!

It is a Kissimmee Valley Sunday, and I am home and no reason to leave my house.  I need one day a week like this, just one.  No bra, no dental adhesive, no eyebrow pencil, no trip to Publix.  I cook, I knit, I drink coffee, I watch TV, I talk baby-talk to the furries.  I've got these potatoes and onions in the crockpot now, set on high for four hours, and bacon baking for the sweet and tangy chicken (but that's another blog post, yes).  I made some tuna fish salad for lunch.  I suggested watching movies because there's just so much Fox News and Food Network one can absorb in a weekend.  My vote was Mel Brooks - all of them, a glorious comedic marathon - but Rob said he was thinking of Guardians of the Galaxy, which we have not yet seen. (Nor will we see today, because apparently the DVD player died.  Requiescat in pace.)

Today's recipes are the last acts of desperate vegetables, especially the potatoes.  When I came down into the kitchen this morning, I found these:

Sprouting taters.  Some cooks will toss these as they are, but I was taught to peel and discard the sprouts, and rock on.  These potatoes had just started to sprout, and so the potatoes were still relatively firm.  By tomorrow, however, they would likely be past their prime.  So these potatoes were desperate to be cooked, as were a couple of onions that were starting to show a bit of fuzz.

Perfect opportunity to use the divided insert for my 6 quart crockpot, right?  Onions on one side, potatoes on the other.  I've also done this with the onions, and a half recipe of Pioneer Women's Burgundy Mushrooms.  Oh my, let me stop to swoon.  Then let me stop to lightly coat the inside of the crock with some non-stick spray.

Crockpot Garlic Mashed Potatoes
6 - 8 smallish gold potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons half and half
a couple of cloves smashed garlic
kosher salt, black pepper, and dried chopped chives

Combine all of these ingredients in the crock.  Cover and cook on high for 3 1/2 hours.  Now add as much additional butter and half and half as you like, plus more salt and pepper to taste.  Beat the potatoes with an electric hand mixer.  Remove from the crockpot and set aside while the onions finish cooking. You can eat them like this or you can wait for the caramelized onions.

Crockpot Caramelized Onions
3 - 4 medium onions, sliced thin
4 tablespoons butter
kosher salt, black pepper, and a pinch of sugar

Combine all of these ingredients in the crock.  Cover and cook on high for 4 1/2 hours, until the onions are soft and sweet.

Now you have a tough decision to make.  Should you enjoy each dish separately, or fold the onions into the garlicky potatoes?

Not sure if you can see it in this photo, but I combined the two.  Very very good. But I could see eating those garlic mashed as is, and saving the onions for another noble purpose involving mushrooms and peas and Arborio rice - or just for topping a hamburger or steak.

Fry Me A River - No Fry Sweet and Tangy Chicken

Now you say you're lonely
You cried the long night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you

Oy ... I'm crying a river for my beloved Magic, who are having a bad weather day.  Oh yes, the Thunder are in town and at Amway, and if the first quarter is predictive, the Magic are screwed.

During play-offs, I root for the Thunder.  I love Kevin Durant, and who wouldn't love a team with players named Sir Chewbacca (Serge Ibaka) and Reggie Jackson?  But these aren't the play-offs, and Orlando is 30 points down.  One small glass of wine is not going to help, but that's my limit.

This is one of the 6 billion recipes for cooking chicken.  I found it about 20 years ago, and make it a couple of times a year.  It's got three of my favorite flavors combined in the glaze, honey, Dijon mustard, and curry.  I like this on the chicken thighs rather than the breasts, because I think the glaze works better on the richer dark meat.  The original recipe calls for pan frying the bacon and then frying the chicken in the bacon fat before putting it in the oven, but today I was simply not in the mood to spew oil all over my cooktop.  

Sweet and Tangy Chicken (Oven Version)

1/2 pound bacon
8 chicken thighs (bone in, skin on)

Spices for chicken:
kosher salt
black pepper
granulated garlic
sweet paprika
cayenne pepper
curry powder

Glaze:
1/3 cup honey
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon curry powder
kosher salt
cayenne

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Place the bacon slices in an aluminum baking pan and into the oven.  Let them brown and crisp, then turn over and repeat.  Remove the cooked bacon to drain on paper towels.  Once the bacon fat cools to room temperature, place the chicken into the same baking pan, turning each piece to coat with some of the bacon fat.  Season both sides of the chicken to taste with the spices, and finish with the skin side up.  Place the pan into the oven and bake for 30 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and carefully pour off most of the collected juices. Using tongs, turn the chicken pieces skin side down, and return the pan to the oven for another 30 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven.  Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees.  Carefully pour off most of the liquid in the pan, and use the tongs to turn the chicken skin side up.  Combine the ingredients for the glaze in a small bowl or glass measuring cup, and mix until smooth.  Spoon over the chicken in the pan, using up all of the glaze.  Place the pan in the oven and bake another 15 minutes for the glaze to set.  If you like, turn on the broiler element for a minute, then immediately remove the pan so the glaze won't burn.  Before you return the pan to the oven, finely chop a few of the cooked bacon strips.  Immediately upon removing the finished chicken from the oven, sprinkle on the bacon bits, and serve.

C is for Cookie. And Crockpot.

I sometimes get ahead of myself with this blogging thing, and end up with any number of drafts.  Eventually I get around to finishing and publishing them, although I have to admit a good number get deleted for any number of reasons.  Too dark, too personal, too likely to cause me trouble.

Part of the problem is that my mind never stops running tapes in my head.  The other problem is that when I am home, I cannot stay out of the kitchen.  Even now as I sit here typing, I feel the pull towards the oven - I've been wanting to bake cookies.  I am forcing myself to stay put.  Besides having already baked corn muffins today, I saved the clams and completed two more recipe blog posts.  I now have six fully completed, ready to go blog posts, each one with a really good recipe.  But I can't stay away from the keyboard anymore than I can resist the pull of the kitchen.

Also, I am trying to keep panic at arm's length.  Never fails the night before return to work after a weekend.  Especially when I am facing a heavy docket including a couple of trials and I don't have my files here at home.   Oh hell.  To quote Scarlett O'Hara "tomorrow is another day."  And "Bizarre Foods" is on.

I still want to bake cookies.

That inspired me to put some more work into my recipe collection project.  The last group of printed recipes to be placed into plastic sheet protectors is desserts - cakes, cookies, pies, puddings.  It's a pretty thick stack of paper, and this is definitely going to require more than one ring binder.  After going through all of the "tried" recipes - the "to-be-tried" pile still has to be worked on - I came across so many cookie recipes I forgot I had.  Old favorites from back in the day when I would bake 600 cookies for Christmas parties and gift-giving.  Some family heirlooms, like my grandmother's moon cookies and my mother-in-law's butter cookies.  The nut cup recipe I got from that really obnoxious junior broker from Connecticut.  Four types of oatmeal cookies.  Macaroons (not to be confused with French macarons).  Someday soon, I am simply going to have to break down and bake some cookies.  Maybe tomorrow.

Ha ha, no really.  I got home at 10 PM.  No warm sweet aroma of cookies wafting from my kitchen for me.  And I had kind of pinned it down to a white cake mix cream cheese cookie with dried cherries and blueberries.  An Independence Day cookie in January.  Or, assuming I had no time to pick up the dried fruit, a mixture of chips - semi sweet chocolate, milk chocolate, vanilla chips, and butterscotch chips.  Spotted cream cheese cookies.

Maybe this weekend.

Pantry Plunder Split Pea Vegetable Soup - Another Corner of Crockpot Heaven

This is the weekend I made some inroads on the contents of my freezer and pantry.  As much as my heart was yearning for a shopping spree at BJ's, my head was reminding me of the substantial reserves I really needed to work through, to facilitate a well-timed stock rotation.  Out came my last two pillow packs of Perdue chicken thighs plus a package of bacon chunks I picked up during our trip home from Georgia in late October.  I raided my vegetable drawer, my pantry, and my spice cabinet.  I have other plans for the chicken, but here is what I did with the rest of my pantry plunder:

Into the crockpot with you!

2 large stalks celery, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 medium gold potatoes, peeled and diced
up to one pound smoked bacon pieces (my package was frozen)
1 - 12 oz. bag green split peas, rinsed
2 small bay leaves
1 large plum tomato, diced
1 cup frozen black-eyed peas
1 envelope Lipton Recipe Secrets Vegetable Soup & Dip Mix
1 tablespoon dried thyme
black pepper, granulated garlic, parsley flakes, sugar
1 - 32 oz. box chicken stock
2-3 cups water

Put the ingredients in the crockpot in the order given. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 7 hours, which means 8:30 to 9:30 tonight.  We are going out to dinner with friends, so I'll save room to taste the soup when we get back.

At 9:00, the soup wasn't quite done, so my plan is to let it keep cooking for a total of 12 hours on low.  Stir the soup two or three times over the course of the 12 hours.  The split peas should be dissolving into the soup as you stir.  Taste and re-season as you go.

We had a pleasant dinner with our friends, but sad to say, I am not about to recommend the restaurant.  All that joie de vivre was about the good company and the fine wine.  The food ranged from one really good dish (shrimp) to a just okay dish (the lamb shank) and ending with two disappointing dishes (the linguine with white clam sauce, and the pork milanese).  The saddest part of this culinary misadventure was that this fairly new Italian restaurant had replaced Cat Cora's Kouzzina.  We will miss Kouzzina, which served really good Greek and Mediterranean food.  As to the new restaurant, there are much better Italian restaurants in the area, off Disney property.  And let's face it, my preparation of linguine with white clam sauce is much better than theirs - or anyone else's, for that matter.  The late, lamented Tarantino's used to do a really fine linguine with clam sauce, but somewhere along the way the recipe changed and was not quite as good anymore.  Oh, how I miss the good old days when Tarantino's still occupied a tiny corner of an old sheet metal building on the corner of Oak and John Young, and consistently turned out the best Italian food anywhere.

Well, it actually took over 13 hours, but the soup is finished and I am very happy with the result.  So good!  And the bacon chunks are like perfect bites of ultra-tender pork belly.  Swallow and smile, my friends, while you send thanks to the crockpot gods.

Lovely Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling and Lemon Frosting

Happy day after a long weekend!  Faced with a tough morning, and a tougher week, I am charging ahead with a Positive Mental Attitude.  Looking forward to the challenges!  Excited about the day!  Fear is not an option!   The early bird gets the worm, or at least the court files.  Charge!

Alrighty then, once I have some coffee, I'm sure I can pull this off.  Yes.  Right.  Ummm ... I'll let you know how this works out.  First, coffee.  Second, a recipe to try.

I am beginning to wonder if adding the pudding mix to cake mix is such a good idea.  Almost all cake mixes have pudding in the mix, and actually have for over 20 years.  This recipe bakes up a lovely lemon cupcake with a nice even crumb to it, and it was really plenty rich without the pudding.

I made these for Robert, because almost all of my other cupcake experiments have involved chocolate and even coffee.  The least I can do for the man who is still the Best Husband in the World.

Lovely Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling and Lemon Frosting

1 - 18.25 oz. package yellow cake mix (with pudding in the mix)
1 package lemon gelatin
2/3 cup canola oil
2/3 cup hot water
4 extra large eggs

1 - 2 jars Dickinson's Lemon Curd
2 - 16 oz. tubs lemon frosting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Set up two 12 cup muffin tins with paper liners.  Place the cake mix, gelatin, oil, water and eggs in a large bowl.  Beat to combine for about a minute, scrape down the sides, then beat for 2 minutes with an electric mixer.  Portion the batter evenly, then bake for 18 to 22 minutes.  Cool the cupcakes in the tins for about 15 minutes, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.

It was as this point I threw the cupcakes into the freezer, because I wasn't feeling up to filling and frosting.  It's not necessary to the success of the recipe, but I would recommend holding off the filling part until the next day.  You want the cake to be totally firm and set.

Now, using a small sharp knife or the large end of a metal piping tip, remove part of the cake from the middle.  Pipe some lemon curd into each cupcake.

Stir the frosting till smooth and use to finish off the cupcakes.  Gorgeous and delicious.